A Cradle for New Steel Technologies

The U.S. Department of Energy is reducing various risks through its Office of Industrial Technologies (OIT), which shares the cost of developing and implementing technologies that promise to save energy, reduce emissions, and increase productivity of the US steel industry. The OIT signed a compact with the American Iron and Steel Institute and the Steel Manufacturers' Association in May 1995 to collaborate with the U.S. steel industry on three critical research and development areas: process efficiency, recycling, and environmental engineering. Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee developed the nickel aluminide alloy for the rollers, which were centrifugally cast by Sandusky International in Sandusky, OH. This material has superior temperature resistance, which gives it longer service life in the annealing furnace than conventional stainless steel. A phosphor-based sensing technology being tested at Burns Harbor will enable steelmakers to accurately measure the temperature of highly reflective steel strips whose emissivity can skew the readings of optical pyrometers.